Gwendolyn
by Papat K'Tanah
Summary: Everyone grew up, even Wendy. Everyone forgot... except Wendy. In a world where her stories are laughed at, and her drawings are thrown away, what else has she to hold onto but memories? A Hook, perhaps?
1. Prologue

**Title: **Gwendolyn

**Chapter:** Prologue

**Rating: **PG [for now]

**Disclaimer:** I don't own any of the characters you recognize – They belong to J.M. Barrie, bless his heart. This story uses information from both the book and the movie. In the book, Wendy sees Peter once more two years after her adventures, and then the last time she sees him is when he comes back to visit and she's grown up, then he takes her daughter, Jane, with him instead. For this story, I use the movie's version.

** * **

            I never saw Peter Pan again. That delightful boy with his golden hair and cocky grin, who never wanted to grow up but, rather, remain free from obligation and responsibility. And I, his mother, sister, lover, wanted to grow up. I left Neverland and took Peter's friends with me, the Lost Boys. They grew up, too. 

            I hated to watch them grow up. They forgot about Neverland. John and Michael, of course, forgot first. They forgot so quickly, almost the moment Mother took them in her arms and kissed their foreheads. The Twins forgot when they had to go to school, and were forced leave their shyness behind. Tootles forgot when he brought home his best grades yet, and bragged about them in a most un-Tootles-like manner. Slightly forgot with his first girl, when he told himself he'd give her a thimble and she laughed and kissed him instead. He hated to be laughed at. Curly forgot when he fought with another boy at school. While he was very naughty and mischievous, Curly never fought in Neverland. Even Nibs forgot. Nibs, who Peter described as "gay and debonair", forgot last of all. He grew into a charming young man, and recalled all of Neverland until the day he was hired in an office and sat down to his typewriter to do _work_.

            He used to come to me after that, darling Nibs. He would tell me of dreams he had about a place where nobody grew old, and a boy who had no cares in the world. I smiled at him, and told him,

            "It _is a lovely dream, Nibs."_

            "Gwendolyn," he would say, for he loved to call me Gwendolyn, not Wendy as the others did. "Gwendolyn, it is the queerest thing, but I have this feeling I did not just dream it. I _remember it. As if I were actually in this lush land, flying and playing and never growing older." The youth would shake his head sadly before he went on, "But here I am, grown up, working in an office, following the rules I hated to follow as a boy." A funny look would always come over his face then, as if he couldn't remember being a boy anywhere but in his dreamland. But I suppose that's the magic of Neverland. It doesn't forgive those who disappear from it and grow up._

            I wondered, sometimes, why I never forgot. After all, did I not grow up? But _Mother was there. Mother went to Neverland, and _she _always remembered Peter Pan. It has to do with being a girl, I suppose. Or, rather, a woman. Not to mention, I was nearly grown up when I went. I was the eldest of all of them, besides the pirates and Peter. He was as old as the stars compared to I. As old as the stars, but as young as a babe inside. He wasn't human anymore, I don't think. Too much faerie dust, I suppose. And sometimes I could remember him with pointed ears and tiny wings, though I know he _looked_ decidedly boyish in actuality._

            I never saw Peter Pan again.

            But I did see Captain James Hook.

** * **


	2. Wendy Darling

**Title:** Gwendolyn

**Chapter: **Chapter One; Wendy Darling

**Rating:** PG… currently =)

**Disclaimer: **J.M. Barrie owns the Wendy-Bird, Peter, Tinkerbell, the pirates, and any other pretty characters I may have missed that are mentioned in this chapter. The Headmistress is mine, although she is quite generic. Otherwise, hands off.

Wendy is seventeen and has been at Bertram's for two years.

** * **

            Wendy Darling, as usual, paid no attention to the teacher in the front of the classroom. Her face was dreamlike, lips slightly parted, putti-curls framing her delightfully turned up nose and faraway eyes. She held a pencil in one slender hand, and out of it would flow the most wonderful drawings. Mermaids and pirates and, oh, one pirate in particular who was _horrid, with a sinister curved hook for a hand. She drew little boys who wore naught but leaves and pelts for clothes, and tiny faeries darting about in a flourishing forest._

            Wendy drew one little boy more than the others. Sometimes, she would draw a little girl in a nightgown next to him. These were the pictures she kept secret, under her bed, with her secret journal and pages and pages of her clever stories. There were pictures of the little girl and little boy flying, hand in hand, across a sky dotted with cotton candy clouds. Pictures of the little boy giving the little girl a tiny acorn, in a familiar nursery. Pictures of a kiss…

            The girls at school laughed at Wendy, with her head always in the clouds. They laughed when she ran into doors and trees because she was too busy reading a book or daydreaming. The girls in her dormitory complained to the headmistress when Wendy opened the window every night. She was scolded at least once a week for her "complete disregard for others' health! Don't you realize, Gwendolyn, that these girls will _freeze_ to death?" When the girls told the headmistress that Wendy Darling still opened the window every night, Wendy was given detention.

            It was people like the headmistress and the girls in Wendy's dormitory that made Wendy wish to be back in the nursery, with her little brothers, John and Michael, her adopted brothers, the "Lost Boys", and her toys and dress-up clothes. What a care-free life that was, making up stories and playing all day! But Wendy became decidedly too old for the nursery on her fifteenth birthday, and George Darling sent her to boarding school many miles away. It was there that she grew into a beautiful young woman of seventeen, but while she was quite grown up, she still acted like a child.

            It was much to her teachers' miseries that she always drew in class, never paid any attention to them, and spoke of a life that she could never have _really experienced. She pretended many things about the people in her pictures. She claimed that she had been there when the menacing Captain Hook was eaten by an enormous crocodile, and then Peter Pan had taken his faerie, Tinkerbell and dusted the __entire pirate ship with faerie dust to make it fly high into the air to take Wendy and her brothers back to London…_

            Truthfully, the girls at her school did love to hear Wendy's stories about Peter Pan, the boy who never grew up. And they still let her tell a story every so often. But Wendy was an outcast to them, and they teased her about being the "girl who never grew up! Baby Wendy, baby Wendy!"

            Wendy hated them.

** * **

            She wasn't, exactly, a bad student. She was quite bright. It was just that she never realized she was in class and not in her silly dreams of Neverland. It made the teachers furious that she clung to the childish dreams and make-believe. She was supposed to be a _woman_ now.

            Still, she drew the pirates, the boys, Peter Pan, and Tinkerbell every chance she had, these story-book characters, the ones she _knew_ were real – 

            "Gwendolyn Darling!" A piercing, but feminine, voice broke her artistic silence, and Wendy sat up, guilty, papers rustling noisily and dropping to the floor. She grabbed for them, flushing furiously at the muffled giggles around her. She awkwardly reached for her pencil as it rolled away from her, while trying to put her mock-notes on top of the torn drawings. Wendy forced a sheepish smile.

            "I'm sorry, Professor…" Too late for apology, the Professor already had Wendy's ear pinched, using the painful hold to pull Wendy from her desk.

            "Miss Darling, this is positively the _last straw_. You shall not attend my class if you insist on distracting yourself and others by these –" the teacher picked up Wendy's crumpled drawings and held them up to show the class, who couldn't keep their giggles quite so muffled by this point. "These foolish fantasies of yours!" Wendy winced and watched her sketches of Peter Pan and his Lost Boys be tossed carelessly into the waste basket.

** * **            

            "Gwendolyn Moira Angela Darling," the Headmistress looked down her nose at the young girl in front of her. She was not what one would expect from a Headmistress. She was young, and quite pretty, with the kind of hair that can only be described as "raven-black" and eyes that were nearly the same color. One could almost imagine she wasn't a Headmistress, but a real woman, with a first name and a beau who sent her love letters once a week. And while Wendy was quite pretty herself, she always felt silly compared to the Headmistress. Especially now, with one ear burning fiercely red and both eyes uncomfortably cast down, staring at the floor. "Your behavior these past two years has been… trying, to say the least. You are seventeen now, you should know how to behave in a classroom! We have tried to train you to be a _proper young lady, and yet you insist on – "_

            "Please, Headmistress, I _will_ try to be better this time." Wendy's eyes shot up into the woman's displeased features. "I… I know I've promised that before, but you can't send me home! Mother and Father would be so disappointed, and I've already…" Wendy paused. "Please, Headmistress."

            The Headmistress rubbed her temples. "I don't need this, Gwendolyn. I have girls who cause real problems, and still, the teachers send _you to me. You will be reprimanded, but not sent home." Wendy jumped up to thank her, but the Headmistress waved her hand and Wendy sat down again. "Two weekends of weeding in the garden, and I do not want you wandering into the woods as you did last time."_

            "Of course not, Headmistress! I learned my lesson." Wendy smiled at the memory, anyway. She'd had a very pleasant afternoon running about the woods, tearing her dress and getting leaves in her hair. She must have written ten short stories that day, on the papers she always kept ready in her book bag. There was one she enjoyed more than the rest, about a certain part of the woods that felt decidedly Neverland-ish. Peter Pan had found a path in the forests of Neverland that led straight to the woods of Jeanne Bertram's Boarding School for Girls. Wendy and her classmates had just _happened to be on walk when the enchanting boy had sprung out from the trees and shouted,_

            "Gwendolyn!"

            "Oh, no, Headmistress, he didn't shout out my name, for he hadn't recognized me yet! He shouted, 'Oh, the cleverness of me!' For, you see, he was very pleased with himself for finding a way to England that was quicker than flying the whole. Besides, the littlest star had lost its voice, and could no longer shout to Peter when the window had been opened and Mother and Father had gone away. But he was also very worried, for if _he could get to England without flying the _entire_ way, then the horrible pirates could most definitely escape and wreak havoc on the girls at this very school! Peter is fond of girls, you know," she took a breath and glanced up, blushing severely at the Headmistress's incredulous expression._

            "Gwendolyn, I will not even inquire as to what the absurdness you just spouted off to me was. I will, however, insist that you return to your dormitory and dress for supper. You have wasted altogether to much time babbling about pirates and will make us both late unless you hurry." The Headmistress stood up and motioned Wendy out of the room. Wendy bowed her head quickly, then ran out, slipping in the hallway and falling plum on her behind before making it to her room.

            The Headmistress put her head in her hands and groaned.

** * **

**Author's Note: **Ah. To be young again...

O.o Wait, I am young. Never mind. Thank-you to my reviewers. ^_^ You guys are Darlings. [Ahahaha. I should have avoided bad puns. Don't hate me.]


	3. She Tells Herself Stories

**Title:** Gwendolyn

**Chapter: **Chapter Two; Even Tells Herself Stories

**Rating:** PG… currently =)

**Disclaimer: **It would be nice to own something that I don't own. Like Peter or Wendy or Hook or the Lost Boys. Ahahaha. Okay, well, y'all know the deal. They're owned by J.M. Barrie. Which, honestly, I can deal with better than them being owned by Disney.

** * **

_            Wendy hummed softly to herself as she pulled weeds up from the near-perfect gardens of Bertram's. She paused for a moment to look up into the beautiful sky, a great expanse of baby blue dotted with picture perfect, creamy white clouds. She held a hand up to her flushed brow to shade her pretty blue eyes from the sun. She saw a tiny spec of nothing in the distance and disregarded it, wiping the tiny beads of sweat from her forehead and leaving behind an endearing smudge of dirt._

_            She happened to glance back at the sky, where the spec was suddenly taking shape. An odd bird, she mused to herself. But no, it was more than that. It was – it was a boy! A familiar boy dressed in green leaves with a tiny, winged girl flitting around him. Peter Pan!_

_            Wendy jumped up and waved her arms, getting his attention. He grinned cockily and landed in front of her, looking just as she remembered, though maybe a bit taller. He bowed regally, and she curtsied, her dress stained with grass and dirt, but that made Peter smile._

_            "Hallo, Wendy."_

_            "Hallo, Peter."_

_            Four words and that was all he needed to lean in and gently kiss her on the lips… To give her a thimble, as the two called it. She leaned in to kiss him back, his lips rough, tasting of boy and Neverland and… and…_

            And of nothingness. Wendy sat, still, in the gardens, weeds clutched tightly in her hands as she had become lost in her daydream. She pouted to herself, full lips wanting a Peter and getting nothing but a stray fly. Wendy swatted at the bug, quite unfulfilled with just the dream of her beloved. She leaned back, sitting on her knees, turning her head to watch a couple of the other Bertram's girls playing tennis, or perhaps badminton. Whichever, Wendy didn't even know the difference. Those kinds of games were not her forte.

            The girls were familiar. One swung her racquet with a certain sort of grace. Wendy always admired her from afar. She was one year Wendy's senior, quite old to still be at Bertram's. There were whispers around the classrooms that she was engaged to a rich man, old enough to be her father, who was already married and had devious plans to murder his wife to be with this beautiful eighteen year old. Wendy usually didn't listen to rumors of that variety; it was rare that she was ever whispered to, rather than about, anyhow. But she rather liked the intrigue of it all. It was a quite different tale than her and Peter's.

            Wendy's eyes followed the little object being tossed and hit about the court. The other player was much more vigorous in her game. She ran about, without so much as a huff or a puff. She was in good shape, one of those who enjoyed the Bertram's physical education classes. Her name might have been Jane, or Sarah, or something else just as painfully plain. Sarah-or-Jane was one of the girls who would snicker behind her hand at Wendy. Why she was playing anything with the older, much more polite girl was a mystery to Wendy. They almost looked alike; they could have been cousins, or even sisters.

            Before she could stop it, her mind began to tell her little lies about the girls in the form of stories. Jane-or-Sarah _was_ the elegant one's cousin. Her father was a money-grabbing fool who wished nothing more than to marry his daughter rich. He had found out about his niece's engagement to the wealthy, older man, and seen it as a prime chance to get into the upper-most circles. He sent his daughter a curt letter, with absolutely no love in it at all, the sort of love one _should receive from their father, and told Sarah-or-Jane to become her cousin's closest friend. But of course, the cousin knew right away about her uncle's plan. She mailed her lover right away, a young, handsome man, who was not at all rich, telling him to be wary and watch what he writes. Jane-or-Sarah was not at all above reading other people's mail. The cousin could not risk being told upon. Her parents were quite certain she was going to marry flush, and she risked being disowned!_

            It was all _too dramatic, Wendy decided. She dropped the weeds she clutched into a basket at her side, and reached for another pesky plant. No, it would have to have less scheming. She smiled to herself, the sort of smile that showed most at the right corner of her mouth. It would also have to have more _Peter_._

** * **

            Wendy pulled weeds until the sun began to set, moving steadily closer to the captivating edge of the forest. For all the time that she had worked, the amount of weeds she'd pulled was a bit meager. Her basket was half empty. She yawned, vaguely wondering if someone was planning on coming out and "collecting" her, or if she'd have to end this punishment on her own.

            Deep inside, Wendy hoped nobody would come get her. She had always wanted to spend a night _outside_ of Bertram's. And right near the forest… Wendy shivered, thrilled by the very idea of it all. Or perhaps she shivered because a frigid breeze had just wafted by. She pulled the collar of her starched, once-white Bertram's shirt up, and untied the uniform blue bow in her hair to cover her neck with the honey-colored tresses.

            Wendy looked at her watch, the one her mother had given her as a going away present with the hope Wendy would use it to get to her classes on time. It was late, and if no one came soon, she'd miss the last of supper. Supper. She shouldn't have mentioned it to herself; her stomach growled. Wendy sighed and stood up, picking up the basket near her feet. It was so much darker than she had realized, now that her eyes had to focus to larger scenery.

             With a cautious step towards the large, stone building, Wendy found she was aware of every sound around her. Every cricket's chirp, the rustle of the leaves in the slight wind, her own feet on the soft grass, each was louder than life. It reminded her of the night in Neverland when the Lost Boys had been hunting and forgotten poor Wendy, lost on the shores near the mermaids. She'd been frightened, eerily in tune with her surroundings. She had been able to see the mermaids beneath the dark water, shimmering tails silently bobbing in and out of the water. The dark silhouette of Captain Hook's ship loomed in the near distance and she could only imagine the horrible things he'd do to her once he caught her, his wicked hook poised above her head, polished to a shine that mothers rarely achieved on their valuable candlesticks. His arctic eyes suddenly would flash crimson red and she'd know, with every bone in her body shaking, she would be at his mercy.

            A loud crack came from the virtually quiet forest, the telltale snap of a twig that appeared in all of the storybooks. Wendy spun around with a loud gasp. 

            Nobody. 

            Of course there was nobody, she told herself, feeling silly. Scared by her own story of Hook, how childish. Wendy laughed nervously and reminded herself how Peter had flown down to her and shown her the way back to the Hideout. The Lost Boys had been so ashamed of leaving their mother by herself that they gave her every prize they'd gotten during their hunt; two slain rabbits, a live mouse, and a banana bunch.

            The thought Wendy had been trying to keep locked away escaped. Disconcertingly, a tiny, authoritative voice told her, "There are no Lost Boys at Bertram's. There is no Peter Pan in England. You are alone here." It upset Wendy, and she began to move at a quicker pace towards the school. Neverland instincts kept her from running. It was a lesson Peter taught all his boys, and of course, Wendy. Never run. It – whatever is chasing you – will most certainly catch you that way. Hide, fly, duck into a convenient cave, but _never_ run.

            Another silence shattering noise came from the darkness behind her. She fought the urge to look back, another tiny voice added to her thoughts. 

            "See what it is. You can't fight what you don't know." 

            Another chimed in, "Just go. It's dark, it's late, and you will get to Bertram's in minutes if you just _go_." They began to fight in her head, a battle of instinct against gut feeling against nature against instinct. Wendy dropped the basket, slamming her hands over her ears, doing nothing but trapping the voices, making them louder. Fear overran what the little Wendys had to say. She turned around.

            She watched in horror as a shadowy figure stumbled out of the forest. Too large to be a wild animal, and most definitely standing on two legs, it held onto a tree for balance. It glanced up at Wendy, expression barely visible, but one she recognized as a plea for help. The shape fell forward, and Wendy feared greatly that it was dead. She became a mother, a worrier for anyone despite their intentions, and ran to the dim form, which lay curled around itself in pain and weakness.

            The lump of creature slowly took a shape as she dashed towards it. It was a person, a grown man, a man who was hurt, disheveled. He looked as if he hadn't seen a mirror in years. He looked as if he hadn't seen another _person in years. The only word to give him, besides bloodied or hurt, was overgrown. His hair was long and tangled, and his beard was uncut. The poor man seemed to resemble the men in pictures who'd been living on a deserted island for years upon years. _

            His eyes were closed, and Wendy was terrified that he was dead. She gingerly touched his shoulder. The man moved, and she could now see that he was breathing. Wendy let out of a sigh of relief. He groaned, and she leaned down.

            "Are you quite alright, sir?" She could have smacked herself. Of course he wasn't alright! His next groan proved that. He was in rather a lot of pain as far as Wendy could tell. She hesitated, not knowing what to do. "Er… stay here!" Another silly statement, she winced at her own lack of tact. "I'll get help…" His eyes were still closed, but his mouth opened with some effort,

            "Thank you."

** * **

**Author's Note:** Yeah, it took me a long time to get this up, and it's not even super long to make up for it. You guys still love me, right? =) I love you guys. This is the story I've written that's apparently been the most liked, so I'll have to continue it! ^_^ 3


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